Showing results by author "Kelly Mass" in All Categories

The Great Fire of London was a massive fire in the ominous year of 1666 that destroyed the homes of more than 80 percent of the city’s 80,000 or so inhabitants. We will go over how the fire most likely started, why it took such a toll on the London population, and why it kept growing without them being able to extinguish the flames in time. You will also learn about how the city was built, how other competing countries saw the fire as a good thing, and how something else was even more disturbing at this time: the Great Plague of London

The Netherlands had a great century in the 1600s, until it all ended about three-fourths of the way along. Trading was all around; business was good. Their vast empire that reached across the world made money from spices, raw materials, metals, and so much more, with an extensive network of ships and merchants, and an entire army fleet. The Dutch Golden Era was a time in Dutch history varying from about 1588 (the start of the Dutch Republic) to 1672 (the "Catastrophe Year"), throughout which Dutch trade, science, and art, and the Dutch armed force, were amongst the world's best.

Learn more about Vikings' historic background, their misconceptions, and their gods. This audiobook is an extensive take a look at the Viking Age, and the deeds and lives of these ancient, in some cases strange individuals. The Vikings of Scandinavia were brave, adventurous, and frequently barbaric, but there can be no dispute that they were also a people with huge goals. Viking culture is still a topic of interest today, and this uses an insight into simply how withstanding their legacy is.

I guess during the time I was struggling with middle school peers and worried about what other girls thought of my clothes, something nasty happened approximately 6,500 miles away, which is only an eight-hour flight from where I used to live. Who would have thought that even in the 90s, such atrocities would be committed? The movie Hotel Rwanda has depicted some sad displays of human cruelty, although the brutality of it has mostly been censored for the sake of wider audiences.

Picasso’s work is famous. His art is intricate, yet bizarre. His personal life was filled with struggles, and his children weren’t any better off, creating substance abuse and suicidal headlines. Despite the dysfunctionality in his personal and family life, his artwork reflected something new and fresh. And in a variety of paintings, an underlying rebel message against totalitarian regimes. Having lived through many horrors of the Spanish war, as well as other 20th-century conflicts, the painter showed both style and morale in his works, and left a legacy studied by the masses.

This is a great package of several titles in one book. The topics are all related to the history of the Netherlands.

There are doers and there are preachers. The people who were executing orders or abusing people in World War Two wouldn’t have been able to commit any atrocities if the country hadn’t warmed up to an inhumane narrative. That’s where propaganda came in. Propaganda has long been part of various countries and societies to make the population believe something, and to find culprits, create feelings of animosity, and glorify local leaders or military campaigns.

Mother Mary Teresa Bojaxhiu, typically referred to as Saint Teresa of Calcutta in the Catholic Church, was an Albanian-Indian Roman Catholic nun and missionary. She was born in Skopje (today the capital of North Macedonia), which was then part of the Ottoman Empire's Kosovo Vilayet. After 18 years in Skopje, she went to Ireland and ultimately to India, where she spent the remainder of her life. Teresa formed the Missionaries of Charity in the year 1950, a Roman Catholic spiritual order with about 4,500 nuns active in about 133 nations in the year 2012.

Meet Dr. Josef Mengele, a man with a twisted mind who had no compassion for the subjects he experimented on. His methods were cruel. His conclusions were inconclusive, and his sadism hardly knew any boundaries. At the time of WWII, Josef Mengele was a German Schutzstaffel (SS) officer and cosmetic surgeon. He is known for his exploits at the Auschwitz prisoner-of-war camp, where he carried out deadly experiments on slaves, belonged to the team of medical professionals that chose victims for the gas chambers, and was just one of the medical professionals who administered the gas.

The Shinto religion is a mystery to many. There is no real founder, there are many gods and deities that are worshipped, and something about spiritualism and spirits in nature (that most people can’t quite put their finger on). Today, many of those confusions will be cleared up, as you will explore the Shinto faith and all its most important rituals, gods and goddesses, symbolism, etc. A long list of divine beings and their purpose and tasks will be revealed, some background stories about the most famous ones, and the history and legends of Japan’s gigantic mountain: Mount Fuji.

Al Capone was an infamous mob boss between the two world wars in the city of New York and surrounding areas. His name and style have been emulated in movies. The mass shootings, tax evasion, and revenge on Italian murders in the mafia gangs on the United States' East Coast were so notorious that they have become iconic and stereotyped. How did Al Capone get the scars on his face? How did he manage to control so many of the gangs in the cities? How was he able to bribe the police, evade taxes, and become a terror for anyone who opposed him? And how did his life finally come to an end?

This three-part audio guide to the world of ancient Japan includes a brief fact-based intro to ninjas, a treatise on the rituals and cultural importance of the famous samurai warriors of ancient Japan, and an exploration of the some of the principles and gods and goddesses of the mysterious Shinto faith.

The Roman Empire has been in the spotlight for ages. It has been studied, research, and taught in schools across the world. Inventions, words, vocabulary, and philosophy have been derived from those important transition in human history. The Romans were ruthless in some ways yet civilized in others. They were a peculiar people who did things differently than those they called barbarians. Their warfare, their habits, their vision of the future...these all made their empire what it became. What is that makes us so obsessed with this particular time period?

Initially diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, and after a separation of his parents, Edmund Kemper already showed his twisted mind at 15 years old, when he murdered both his grandparents, who were taking care of him. Whether through nature or nurture, this man didn’t show a promising future from the get-go. But perhaps nobody could have suspected the horrors he would inflict on his many victims later in his life.

The Dutch East India Company, officially the United East India Company (Dutch: Vereenigde Oost Indische Compagnie; VOC), was a megacorporation created in the early 17th century by a government-directed merger of many competing Dutch trade services. You might think that Amazon or Google is big, but the VOC is still thought to be the world's biggest corporation in documented history.

Punjab is mainly in Pakistan at this moment, but the Punjabi people live and have resided in India also. As disputes emerged between the Indians and Pakistani, the border has moved from one area to another. Still, the Punjabi society is a vital aspect of India's history. Punjab is a geopolitical, cultural, and historic area in South Asia, situated in the northern area of the Indian subcontinent and incorporating parts of Pakistan and India. With time, the geographical definition of the name "Punjab" has moved

Here we have it: We may be looking at the years 2020-2021 and think a certain virus has been bad for the world population. However, what happened in these two years is nothing, proportionally, to the hundreds of millions of people who got wiped out by rat infestations spreading insanitary bacteria, resulting in the disease and death of huge parts of the European population in the mid-centuries.

The Hittites were mentioned in the Bible. They were an Anatolian people that contributed to creating a kingdom in Kussara before 1750 BC, the Kanesh or Nesha kingdom between 1750 and 1650 BC, and finally an empire based upon Hattusa in north-central Anatolia around 1650 BC. Under uppiluliuma I, the empire reached its peak in the mid-14th century BC, when it ruled over much of Anatolia and areas of the northern Levant and Upper Mesopotamia.

Mao Zedong has had a tremendous impact on the Chinese nation. During his Great Leap Forward, he was responsible for more deaths than both Hitler and Stalin, making him the biggest mass murderer in history. Mao Zedong, typically called Chairman Mao, was a Chinese communist revolutionary who functioned as the starting dad of Peoples's Republic of China (PRC), judgment as the chairman of the Chinese Communist Party from 1949 till his death in 1976. Maoism is a Marxist-Leninist dogma that includes his theories, army operations, and political programs.

The Greek general and king, Alexander the Great, is a name you might have heard before. Although his historical journey varies greatly from the stories and rumors about him, he did accomplish many victories in Asia and Europe in his conquest to rule the world. In this guide, we will go over his appearance, his character, his many battles, his clever military strategies, and the regions he conquered. His vast empire stretched farther than much else had before his time. But eventually, it became divided, and the throne was being fought over.